It’s not very often a man in a crisp black suit running for a city council seat carries around a dead fish in a clear plastic bag.

But anything goes as the election nears.

The political prop was a backdrop for last week’s news conference held by Rep. Joe Baca, D-Fontana, where he lashed out at the millions of dollars being spent by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s political action committee to defeat him in his race for the redrawn 35th Congressional District.

The man holding the fish? Ruben Valencia, who is running for an Ontario City Council seat.

“I smell something fishy, do you?” he said when asked about his dead fish before the news conference started.

VOTER VARIETY

California Republicans got some bad news last week when the latest voter registration figures pegged them at 29.36 percent of the electorate, an all-time low.

In San Bernardino County, Republican registration fell by more than 1 percent from January, the 11th-largest drop statewide.

Republicans now make up 36.1 percent of the county electorate, down from 37.2 percent in January. Democratic registration remained unchanged at 38.8 percent.

In Riverside County, meanwhile, massive voter registration efforts by both parties essentially maintained the January status quo.

Republicans are 40.9 percent of the voters, Democrats are 36.4 percent, and no-party preference voters make up 17.9 percent.

In one of the county’s hardest-fought campaigns, Democrats overtook Republicans in the 36th Congressional District and now claim a resounding 118-voter advantage.

UNDER OBSERVATION

Again this Election Day, the federal authorities will keep tabs on Riverside County’s polling places.

The U.S. Justice Department is deploying more than 780 federal observers and department personnel to 51 jurisdictions in 23 states — including Riverside County — to ensure civil rights are being upheld.

The scrutiny has been going on for a couple of years and follows a federal complaint alleging that the county violated minority-language requirements in the Voting Rights Act by not having enough bilingual poll workers.

The Voting Rights Act says that if either 5 percent or more than 10,000 voting-age residents in a county are a single-language minority with limited English, voting materials and help must be provided in their primary language.

Though Riverside County includes ballots and voter pamphlets in Spanish, officials agreed in 2010 to implement a comprehensive Spanish-language assistance program for voters, including having trained bilingual election officials at polling places.

A federal court April 30 authorized federal observers to monitor Riverside County elections through March 31, 2013.

This week’s Political Empire was compiled by Kimberly Pierceall, Jim Miller and Ben Goad. For political news every day, go to www.pe.com/politics, like PE Politics on Facebook